LESSON 66

My happiness and my function are one.

1 You have
surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the
connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness.
This is because you do not really see the connection. Yet there is
more than just a connection between them; they are the same. Their
forms are different, but their content is completely one.

2 The ego does
constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of
what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy
Spirit about what your happiness is. It is not a two way battle. The
ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. He knows what your
function is. He knows that it is your happiness.

3 Today we
will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle and arrive at the
truth about your function. We will not engage in senseless arguments
about what it is. We will not become hopelessly involved in defining
happiness and determining the means for achieving it. We will not
indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth. We will merely
be glad that we can find out what truth is.

4 Our longer
practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact
that not only is there a very real connection between the function
God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually
identical. God gives you only happiness. Therefore, the function He
gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different.
Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences
in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in
truth.

5 Begin the
ten to fifteen minute practice period by reviewing these
thoughts:

God gives me only happiness.
He has given my function to me.
Therefore my function must be happiness.

Try to see the logic in this
sequence, even if you do not yet accept the conclusion. It is only if
the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false.
Let us, then, think about the premises for a while, as we are
practicing.

6 The first
premise is that God gives you only happiness. This could be false, of
course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as
something He is not. Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness
is evil. God cannot give what He does not have, and He cannot have
what He is not. Unless God gives you only happiness, He must be evil.
And it is this definition of Him you are believing if you do not
accept the first premise.

7 The second
premise is that God has given you your function. We have seen that
there are only two parts of your mind. One is ruled by the ego, and
is made up of illusions. The other is the home of the Holy Spirit,
where truth abides. There are no other guides but these to choose
between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice
but the fear that the ego always engenders, and the love that the
Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.

8 Thus, it
must be that your function is established by God through His Voice,
or is made by the ego which you have made to replace Him. Which is
true? Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of
the ego. Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an
illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts?

9 Think about
this during the longer practice period today. Think also about the
many forms the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and
the many ways in which you tried to find salvation under the
ego's guidance. Did you find it? Were you happy? Did they bring
you peace? We need great honesty today. Remember the outcomes fairly,
and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness
from anything the ego ever proposed. Yet the ego is the only
alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice.

10 You will
listen to madness or hear the truth. Try to make this choice as you
think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. We can share
in this conclusion, but in no other. For God Himself shares it with
us. Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the
same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand
all illusions. All truth stands on the other. Let us try today to
realize that only the truth is true.

11 In the
shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today if
undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is
suggested:

My happiness and function are one, because God has
given me both.

It will not take more than a minute,
and probably less, to repeat these words slowly and think about them
a little while as you say them.